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Chapter 31

Grimes did not overstay his welcome. Drongo Kane's entourage were not his sort of people, neither was he theirs. There had been too much shop talk, little of it concerned with what was going on at Stratford. As far as Grimes was concerned the only really interesting professional gossip was that of fellow spacemen.

He made his way through the almost deserted village to The Far Traveler's pinnace. He turned the robots to set up two pneumatic tents hard by the small craft, one for the Baroness and one for himself. While he was overseeing the work he was joined by that lady.

She asked, "What are you doing, Captain?"

He replied, "I don't fancy sleeping in a house from which the rightful occupants have been evicted by force, Your Excellency."

"They never were the rightful occupants," she said.

"So Drongo Kane's peddled you his line of goods," he remarked. "Your Excellency."

She actually flushed. "Captain Kane is a most remarkable man."

"You can say that again!" Grimes told her. Then-—"Can't you see what he's trying to do?" He made an appeal to her business acumen. "You, I well know, are a major shareholder in the Dog Star Line. If Kane, through his thawed-out figureheads, gains control of this planet it will do the Dog Star Line no good at all."

She laughed. "And what if I become a major shareholder in Southerly Buster Enterprises?"

Grimes said, "I would advise strongly against it, Your Excellency."

Again she laughed. "I hired you, Captain, as a yachtmaster, not as a financial adviser. After all—which of us is the multi-billionaire?"

Not me, that's for sure, thought Grimes.

"So," she went on, "you may sleep in that glorified soap bubble if you so desire. I shall find the accommodation arranged for me by Captain Kane far more comfortable. A very good night to you."

She strode away toward the house which had once been Queen Anne's palace. Two of her robots accompanied her. No harm would come to her, could come to her unless she wished it—and Grimes was not one of those who would regard a roll in the hay as harm, anyhow.

But why with Drongo Kane, of all people!

 

Eventually he turned in. There was nothing else to do. Nobody wanted him; he was just the hired help. He was settling down into the comfortable pneumatic bed when the door of the tent dilated and one of the golden robots came in. It (he?) stood there, looking down at Grimes. Grimes looked up at it.

"Well?" he demanded irritably.

The voice that issued from the automaton's chest was not the mechanical monotone that Grimes had come to associate with these robots. The words were in Big Sister's metallic but still feminine tones.

"Captain Grimes, may I have your report on what has been happening in Stratford?"

Grimes said, "Aren't the robots your eyes and ears? And aren't you supposed to be in contact with Her Excellency at all times through her personal radio?"

"Her Excellency," said Big Sister, "can discontinue such contact at will. In certain circumstances she insists upon privacy. So it is that I am now obliged to work directly with you."

"I happen," said Grimes stiffly, "to be employed by Her Excellency."

"And I," Big Sister told him, "am owned by Her Excellency. Nonetheless she played no part in my initial programming. As you are probably already aware, entities such as myself are required by Interstellar Federation Law to have built-in respect for that same law and its processes. I would not have acted to rescue you from Commander Delamere's ship on Botany Bay had I not considered that the commander had acted illegally. Also, of course, I am programmed to protect my owner."

"She is her own woman," Grimes said harshly.

Big Sister laughed. That crystalline tinkling was distinctly odd as it emanated from the expressionless, masculine even though asexual robot She said, "I possess an extensive theoretical knowledge of sex. I do not think that Michelle will come to any harm from a brief affair with Captain Kane, any more than she would have done from one with you—which, frankly, I should have preferred . . ."

Grimes interrupted her. "But I don't like it. A high-born aristocrat in bed with that . . . pirate . . ."

"Are you rushing to the defense of the hereditary aristocracy, Captain Grimes? You surprise me. And as for Captain Kane's being a pirate, what of it? The founder of the d'Estang fortunes owned and commanded a privateer out of St. Malo during the Napoleonic Wars on Earth, and the dividing line between privateer and pirate was always a very thin one. Even so, I am concerned about the possibility of a financial liaison between Her Excellency and Captain Kane. She could come to harm through that. I have taken it upon myself to have all available information concerning Southerly Buster and her Master fed into my data bank."

"You must play it back to me some time," said Grimes.

"Perhaps I shall," said Big Sister. "But now I must ask you to make your own contribution to the bank. Please tell me all that you have seen, heard, experienced, felt and thought since your landing at Stratford. My robots have seen and heard and I have recorded. They do not think and they do not have hunches. Neither do I to any great extent, although association with humans is developing—but, so far, only slightly—my paranormal psychological processes. But you are fully human and blessed with intuition.

"Please begin."

Grimes began. He talked and he talked, pausing now and again to fill and to light his pipe, to take a gulp of a cold drink poured for him by the robot. He talked and he talked—and as he spoke the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle fell neatly into place. The oddities in the appearance of the resurrectees, the peculiar stroke that Little and Pettifer had used while swimming ashore from the wrecked dinghy, the way that they had shaken themselves, the faint yet pungent odor that had steamed from their wet bodies . . . It all added up.

He finished at last.

Big Sister said, "Thank you, Captain. I shall now see to it that the planetary authorities take prompt action."

"They'll never listen to you in Melbourne," said Grimes pessimistically, "especially if this Delamere is anything like his cousin. They'll not listen to me either. I've no status any more. If I were still in the Survey Service . . . but I'm not."

"Somebody will listen," said Big Sister, "if the message comes from you, in your voice. I shall send a robot at once to Maya to tell the story. She still has a great deal of time for you. Then she will call Melbourne and talk to Tabitha, queen to queen and Tabitha will talk to Mr. Delamere—not only as wife to husband but as queen to prince consort . . .

"And then . . ."

"It could work," admitted Grimes.

And not for the first time he was impressed by Big Sister's knowledge of human psychology.

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Framed